New beetle species found 'pristinely' preserved in fossilized poop

[FfFfFfFF 58,144]

Fossilized feces are common finds at paleontological dig sites and might actually contain hidden treasures. By scanning fossilized dung assigned to a close dinosaur relative from the Triassic period, scientists discovered a 230-million-year-old beetle species, representing a new family of beetles, previously unknown to science. The beetles were preserved in a 3D state with their legs and antennae fully intact. The finding appears June 30 in the journal Current Biology.

The discovery that fossilized droppings, also known as coprolites, can preserve ancient insect species offers a new alternative to amber fossils—fossilized tree resin, which normally yield the best-preserved insect fossils. The oldest insect fossils from amber, however, are approximately 140-million-years old, and thus from relatively recent geological times. With coprolites, researchers can now look even further into the past, allowing them to learn more about insect evolution and food webs of yet unexplored time intervals.

"We didn't know how insects looked in the Triassic period and now we have the chance," says Martin Fikáček, an entomologist at National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan and a co-author on the paper. "Maybe, when many more coprolites are analyzed, we will find that some groups of reptiles produced coprolites that are not really useful, while others have coprolites full of nicely preserved insects that we can study. We simply need to start looking inside coprolites to get at least some idea."

"I was really amazed to see how well preserved the beetles were, when you modeled them up on the screen, it was like they were looking right at you," says first author Martin Qvarnström, paleontologist at Uppsala University.

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-beetle-species-pristinely-fossilized-dinosaur

[bionic 50,111]

A beetle got into my house the other day and I crushed it with a shoe. I wonder how closely these two species were related

[River 127,594]

can we make Jurassic park out of it?

[LateToCult 41,879]

Scat fetish.

[ProfessionalClown 10,647]

19 minutes ago, LateToCult said:

Scat fetish.

How do you block someone on this godforsaken cult site 

Spoiler

Beetles are kinky mfs huh